For an indie first-person shooter/tower-defense hybrid, Sanctum is incredibly popular. Coffee Stain Studios’ most successful title, which has shipped (digitally) a little over 350,000 units, is being ported over to Mac. Available on August 13th, Mac users will finally feel the love of the Swedish developer’s awesome effort — which seems to be a Steam community favorite, having just last week been voted into a Community Sale.

Sanctum is a refreshing take on the tower defense genre, incorporating first-person shooter mechanics. Players control an elite soldier who goes by the name of Skye and help Skye protect her hometown, Elysion One, from invading aliens. Sanctum requires planning: before jumping into battle, you must assure that all of your pieces are properly placed on the map to ensure the best possible defensive and labyrinthine structure; after setting the playing field, gamers jump straight into the action and actually battle their enemies headfirst. Complete with co-op and multiplayer components, Sanctum should be a hell of a catch for Mac users who have been looking for a fresh experience.

For now, you can check Sanctum out on Steam and on Coffee Stain’s official website. For those that actually want to participate in the Mac beta for Sanctum, you can do so here.

Source: The Indie Game Magazine – Popular FPS/Tower Defense Hybrid ‘Sanctum’ Coming to Mac

The tower defense and first-person shooter genres will merge together this weekend for a humble admission fee of nothing at all. That’s because Sanctum, Coffee Stain Studio’s eminent entryway into the dynamic indie stratosphere, will be free to play this weekend through Steam.

The promotion will last from Thursday 3rd May until Monday 7th May and is accompanied by a very tempting discount sale. During the same period of time, the game will be subject to a 75% price cut, bringing it down to £1.74/$2.49/€2.49. Also enjoying a price reduction are the Sanctum four-pack, providing buyers with three additional keys to give to their friends at a price of £5.24/$7.49/€7/49, and the Sanctum Collection, containing the base game, every item of downloadable content and the game’s official soundtrack, all for £3.75/$5.00/€5.00.

I hear a rumbling. The sound of a thousand reindeer’s hooves. The sound of many jolly fat men falling down chimneys. And the sound of a plethora of indie games on Steam updating all at once, adding new content, levels, achievements and more. It’s no secret that Valve have strong ties with a great many indie studios, but I think they might just be pulling out all the stops today.

Another day, another chunk taken out of your wallet, and another few delicious indie games added to your swelling Steam account. As with all our other updates on this subject, these are just the daily deals that you should be paying attention to – there’s no shortage of other games out there. Today, just a couple of items, but they’re essentials if you like your games bright and shooty.

Last week, IndieGames.com and Desura presented a new fortnightly event called Indie Royale. For those who haven’t checked it out yet, the idea is pretty simple. A bundle of 4 games are presented for a price of $2.00. As the bundle sells more the price steadily increases. But if users pay more for the game than the minimum the price will be reduced.

It’s definitely interesting to see how the indie games bundle market has expanded since the Humble Bundle started the trend a couple years ago.

Let’s talk some Indie Royale in a sec, but before that why don’t you pick up their launch bundle while it’s still available. You have less than six hours at the time of writing to make your purchase, as the four-game offer ends today at 11 AM Pacific.

The non-fixed price is hovering at $5.18 at the moment, a fantastic tag indeed for a quad-ling of awesome indie titles; and if you demand perks on top of getting games on the super cheap, you’re in luck! You greedy son of a bitch, you.

How do digital versions (in Desura, Steam and direct download formats) of Ares: Extinction Agenda, Gemini Rue, Sanctum and Nimbus sound to you? Nice? Well, how about $2 for all four together? Great? Well, you’d best get moving fast, because Indie Royale looks to be taking a slightly different approach to indie bundle packs. With each sale, the minimum price – this is a pay-what-you-want sale, primarily – creeps a little higher.

Two Midweek Madness sales are going on right now through Steam, with both focused on indie games. Each bundle contains five games for the price of one, and their sale has less than 48 hours remaining.

One of the bundles is aptly titled the Indie 2D Bundle and have some of the best 2D games all rolled into one from Gaijin Games, Nicalis, Over the Top Games, Ronimo Games, and 2D BOY. This bundle is $9.95, which makes each game less than $2!

The 2D titles are the following:

• Swords & Soldiers HD (RTS)
• World of Goo (puzzle)
• BIT.TRIP.RUNNER (action platform)
• Nightsky (action-puzzle)
• Nyxquest: Kindred Spirits (platform)

The Indie Strategy Bundle also works out to being less than $2 a game, with hits from 11 Bit Studios, Hidden Path Entertainment, Puppygames, Cadenza Interactive and Coffee Stain.

The five strategy titles are the following:

• Anomaly: Warzone Earth
• Defense Grid: The Awakening
• Revenge of the Titans
• Sanctum
• Sol Survivor

$20 for ten games!? I hate to sound like an old fart, but that was unheard of in the olden-timey cartridge/retail only generation. Thank Asura for indie bundles!

Source: IndieGames

Coffee Stain Studios has released a demo for its unique first-person shooter/tower defense hybrid title Sanctum, now available for download to try out.

Players are charged with two tasks to secure the area: Construct a maze of towers, which alone won’t stop the invading armies of foreign monsters, and Upgrading your firearms, getting you into the fight, cleaning up messes by picking off survivors. You become an X-factor in the gameplay and can exploit weak spots in the enemy’s attack.

Developer Coffee Stain Studios is planning on completing a “full version” of the Unreal Engine 3 powered Sanctum, which orginated as an Unreal Tournament 3 mod before switching to Epic’s free UDK that was released last year.

The file is available for download now via UDK.com as well as on FileShack weighing in at 323 MB. The developer is creating a 2D tower defense iPhone game based on Sanctum as well. We’ll be keeping our good eye on it.